Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to ensure patients are given adequate warning by GPs before they are deregistered.

NHS England has always worked with general practices to regularly review their lists and improve their accuracy. Where there is evidence that a patient may no longer be resident in the United Kingdom, NHS England initiates the standard process under which patients are contacted and given up to five months to respond before any removal action is taken.

Where a patient is identified as potentially no longer resident in England, they are contacted and given multiple opportunities to confirm or update their details. Contact may take place through a combination of letter, email, and SMS, depending on the information available. Patients can respond through a number of routes and are given sufficient time to do so before any further steps are taken. Patients are not removed from a practice list solely because they do not respond to a single communication.

The current programme ensures that patients with evidence of recent National Health Service activity are excluded before progressing further through the process. NHS England currently applies an 18‑month activity check as part of these arrangements, helping to ensure that patients actively accessing NHS services are not inappropriately identified.